A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Terribly Happy [Frygtelig lykkelig](2009): Danish film noir about a police officer assigned to a strange and insular town after he has a nervous breakdown; often compared to the Coen brothers or David Lynch, Slant calls it a “surreal noir” and The Hollywood Reporter called it “seriously weird.”  The Danish submission for the foreign language film Oscar; too weird to be nominated.  Terribly Happy official site.

NEW ON DVD:

The Time Travelers Wife (2009):  Romantic sci-fi/fantasy about a man born with a gene which causes him to become unstuck in time at random intervals.  Scripted by Bruce Joel Rubin of Jacob’s Ladder fame from a bestselling novel by Audrey Niffenegger.  Few critics thought it was too good, but at least one (Brandon Judell) thought it was “too weird,” which may be considered an endorsement. Buy The Time Traveler’s Wife.

Triangle (2009): Time-travel tale about passengers on a capsized yacht who escape to a mysteriously deserted cruise ship.  Some viewers call it a surrealistic mindbender, while others suggest its a bigger-budget version of the intriguing but non-weird Spanish film Los Cronocrimes [Timecrimes].   Looks like we’ll have to view it and weigh in. Buy Triangle.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Fear and Loathing is Las Vegas (1998): You often hear the hackneyed phrase “an acid trip on film”, but the description actual fits Terry Gilliam‘s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s hallucinogenic counter-cultural touchstone fairly literally. A big weird Blu-ray addition! Buy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [Blu-ray].

The Man from Earth (2007): Philosophical, independent sci-fi film about a college professor who claims to be 14,000 years old. A thinking man’s picture, which explains why you’ve probably never heard of it before. Buy Man From Earth [Blu-ray].

The Time Travelers Wife (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy The Time Traveler’s Wife [Blu-ray].

Triangle (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy Triangle [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Apologies first: last week, I said the Dark Backward review would appear, but real life intervened and we couldn’t get it out.  Expect to see it appear early next week.  Other reviews that are planned, but may or may not appear next week: our long-anticipated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind treatment, John Hand’s low-budget sci-fi followup to Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare, Scars of Youth (2008), and, just for giggles, Beyond Re-Animator.

For our weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, we’ll go with someone’s attempt to track down info on a very obscure film sub-genre: “ElectroMagnetic Field comedy movies.”

The reader-suggested review queue looks like this: Survive Style 5+ (looking for a copy); The Dark Backward (next week–this time, I swear!); The Short Films of David Lynch; Santa Sangre; Dead Man; Inland Empire; Monday (assuming I can find an English language version); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Barton Fink; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (possibly jumping in line to come out next week); Gothic; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall;Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; and Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]. Wow!

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009):  An intriguing, though badly underpromoted, idea.  Shades of Waking Life, a team of animators animated scenes from the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead in varying styles encompassing “everything from puppet theater to CGI, hand drawn animation to flash, and oil paintings to tattoos.”  It will surely come out on DVD someday, but for now it seems to be popping up in sporadic screenings (though the only one I’ve heard of was in Alaska).  Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated official site. [UPDATE: per project organizer Mike Schneider (see comment), readers are encouraged to contact their “local independent theater or favorite tv/ web horror host to contact screening@notldr.com” to arrange a screening of the movie. This is a not-for-profit project, which helps explain why they are trying to promote it solely through word of mouth.]

Saint John of Las Vegas: This quirky road trip story about a retired blackjack player turned insurance fraud investigator returning to Las Vegas has some surreal interludes, but even the presence of Steve Buscemi and Sarah Silverman hasn’t stopped critics from savagely beating it and leaving the remains for dead in the desert (a stunningly bad 5% on Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer).  Saint John of Las Vegas official site.

FILM FESTIVALS:

Sundance (Park City, Utah, Jan 21-31):  Sundance snuck up on us this year!  No wonder: the indie fest is not really a friend to innovation and experimentalism so much as it is to environmentalism, leftist politics in general, and insomnia-curing documentaries.  Nonetheless, there are some weird and potentially weird films screening this year:

• Armless – comedy about a married suburban man he finally gathers the courage to live out his lifelong dream: having his arms amputated
• Cane Toads: The Conquest – a sequel to Mark Lewis’ 1998 cult documentary about the “invasion” of cane toads in Australia—this go-round, in 3-D!
• Enter the Void – fresh from an unsuccessful run at Cannes and primed for an unsuccessful run at Sundance, this story of an immigrant Tokyo drug dealer/addict who survives a hail of gunfire as a hallucinating ghost is described by director Gaspar (Irréversible) Noé as a “psychedelic melodrama.”
• Memories of Overdevelopment [Memorias del desarrollo] – Collage-style story of a Cuban exile in the United States. The overwritten press release claims it is, among other things, “a surreal foray into memory and the unconscious.”
• ODDSAC – A 53-minute “visual album” matching experimental visuals to the equally experimental music of Animal Collective. Visuals and audio are both definitely trippy.
• Pepperminta – Swiss story of a literally colorful young woman who throws swaths of psychedelic dye and groovy fantasy over the mundane world outside her door. Sundance includes a multimedia installation revealingly titled Lobe of Lung: The Saliva Ooze Away to the Underground that allows the viewer to “lounge inside the film”.
• The Temptation of St. Tony [Püha Tõnu kiusamine] – Black and white, surrealist Estonian film about a mid-level manager who begins to question the value of virtue; the scenario seems to be inspired equally by the story of St. Anthony and Dante’s “Inferno.”  For our purposes, the most promising entry at Sundance, and the film we’ll be keeping an eye on.
• Vegetarian – Korean film about a young woman who has dreams that cause her to become disgusted by meat.  Hard to get a fix on what it’s going to be like.
• The Violent Kind – a movie about drug-dealing outlaw bikers and their encounter with the supernatural and weird colors in the sky.  Self-described “gleeful, insane exploitation”; Twitch called it “the pinnacle of the WTF?! genre.” Another one to watch for.

NEW ON DVD:

Goodbye Gemini (1970): A very obscure British psychothriller about a pair of fraternal twins (with the usual eerie bond) who are introduced into the swinging subculture of mod 1960’s London. Buy Goodbye Gemini.

Little Ashes (2009): Read our capsule review.  Dry and gossipy biopic about the rumored love affair between Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García. Buy Little Ashes.

Paris, Texas (1984): Not necessarily weird, but Wim Wender’s starkly beautiful movie about a man found wandering in the desert who starts to reconnect with the life he left behind has an odd and dreamlike tone that becomes hypnotic at times.  Highly recommended; a great add by the Criterion Collection. Buy Paris, Texas (Criterion Collection).

Ponytypool (2008): Read our capsule review. High-concept, low-budget “zombie” movie where a virus is spread through language. Buy Pontypool.

Troma’s War (Tromasterpiece Edition) (1988): Several Tromaville citizens crash land on a Caribbean island and are soon caught up in a third world war.  If you’ve seen one Troma movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all.  No idea how this “Tromasterpiece” edition differs from the previous release. Buy Troma’s War (Tromasterpiece Edition).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Paris, Texas (1984): See description under DVD above. Buy Paris, Texas [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Some low-budget, under-the-radar reviews are coming next week: look for pre-release coverage of James Felix McKenney‘s Christian scare film parody, Satan Hates You (2009), and John Hand’s micro-budget artsploitation horror Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare (2006).  For something more mainstream, we’ll throw in a review of the bizarre, reader-suggested black comedy The Dark Backward (1991).  (How many sites can claim a movie about a stand-up comic growing a third arm out of his back is the most mainstream film they’ll be reviewing that week?)

The weirdest search term used to locate the site this week was an easy choice:  “Disney movie that a tiny boy jumps into a pile of dog poop.”  We think someone may have gotten their memories of Toy Story and Pink Flamingos mixed up, but if such a movie does exist, we’d like to know about it.

The reader-suggested review queue continues to grow at an alarming pace.  Here it is: Survive Style 5+ (looking for a copy), The Dark Backward (next week), The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, Xtro, Basket Case, Suicide Club, O Lucky Man!, Trash Humpers (when/if released), Gozu, Tales of Ordinary Madness, The Wayward Cloud, Kwaidan, Six-String Samurai, Andy Warhol’s Trash, Altered States, Memento, Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gothic, The Attic Expeditions, After Last Season, Getting Any?, Performance, Being John Malkovich, The Apple, Southland Tales, Arizona Dream, Spider (2002), Songs From The Second Floor, Singapore Sling, Alice [Neco z Alenky], Necromania (1971, Ed Wood), Hour of the Wolf, MirrorMask, Possession, Suspiria, Mary and Max, Wild Zero, 4, Nothing (2003), The Peanut Butter Solution, Ninja Scroll, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Danger: Diabolik, Faust, Sublime, and Battle Royale.